49

contemporary you may not marry her.' It seems unlikely
that a semantic shift has occurred with this word since
the 17th century. Rather, the Bertonio gloss probably
reflects an initial difficulty in translation when the
Aymara interpreter, having no one term in his language
for 'relative', finally approximated it with apa.fia.
The bafflement of the Aymara at hearing an injunction
to marry only someone older or younger may only be
imagined. Other such translation errors or distortions
have contributed to the development of the translation
dialects Missionary and Patr6n Aymara (Chapter 9).

Such errors may well have contributed to the
difficulties the missionaries encountered in their
efforts to convert the Aymara. Bertonio acknowledged
such difficulties in the Vocabulario in a section
addressed ‘to the priests of the Aymara Nation'. Deny-
ing that Aymara was a difficult language (he said the
Jesuits in Juli learned to preach in the language in a
year), he conceded that students of the language tended
to become disheartened, discerning in the Aymara a low
capacity for learning and a strong resistance to con-
version.

. they are so given to bad customs,

their hearts are so full of spines and

thistles, that the seed of the divine

word planted there will not bear fruit

(Bertonio 1612:unnumbered page
facing A 3; English translation mine)